


i am oh so glad we met the second time around

by hihoplastic



Series: DW Tumblr Prompts/Reposts [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-14 00:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5722807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hihoplastic/pseuds/hihoplastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shifts uncomfortably, and though she doesn't turn, he’s positive she knows. It's only a moment before she had a partner, a tall, young fellow with a broad chest and large hands, falling to her hips where his would have gone to her back. The fabric of her skirt peels aside every so often to reveal a long stretch of leg up to the tops of her thigh, calves stretched by heels - tall, but solid, easy to move in, dance in, run in. </p><p>He doesn't know why that occurs to him. Normal people don't run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am oh so glad we met the second time around

**Author's Note:**

> \- requested by [denise](http://calledmarriage.tumblr.com/), as part of an au meme - _river/doctor + two miserable people at a wedding_. thank you, sweetie! i hope you like it!  
>  \- thank you to pam for reading over this for me! and for not being pissed it's accidentally a lot like her fic, [a photograph you carry like a future in your back pocket](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2426282/chapters/5369777) (which everyone should read and is a lot better than this fic)  
> \- this is still dw-verse, but canon divergent - no plot points from series 8, 9 or the christmas special, just the doctor's rather traumatic, forgetful regeneration.  
> \- title from sammy cahn's _the second time around_ (music by jimmy van heusen)  
>  \- i based river's dress off [this one.](http://stylesizzle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/what-wear-fall-wedding-az.jpg) because everyone should have the visual of alex kingston wearing that. you're welcome.

_Who can say what brought us to this miracle we’ve found?_  
_There are those who’ll bet love comes but once, and yet_  
_I’m oh, so glad we met the second time around_  
\- Sammy Cahn, _The Second Time Around_

 

“It won't last,” he mutters, eyes narrowed at the couple on the dance floor, Clara with her heavy skirt rucked up and her husband attempting to moonwalk.

The ballroom is full of music and laughter and drunken steps, everything bright and shining and it makes his eyes hurt. He drums his fingers against the table next to his plate, still half full of some overpriced, over-seasoned fish and a sad looking vegetable he hadn't touched. 

_All vegetables look sad,_ he thinks, frowning as the groom - David? Donald? - spins his wife and brings her back, cradling her against him with a reverence that makes his stomach rebel. 

“That's a terrible thing to say.”

The Doctor blinks, turning to face the only other person still sitting at the large, circular table. He hadn't noticed her, half-hidden behind an elaborate - frankly, atrocious - floral arrangement. She hasn't looked up, thumbing through a blue book in her lap, but it's her tone that intrigues him - mild, disinterested. 

He peers around the pink bundles and weird green stems. 

“Am I wrong?”

She shrugs. “Doesn't matter if you are or not,” she returns. “It’s a wedding. Keep it to yourself.”

He feels vaguely chastised, though unsure why he cares. 

“Bride or groom?”

She looks up, finally, but it’s grudging and distracted, her lips pressed into a thin line, a slight crease between her eyes. 

“Sorry?”

For some reason, he can't look away. 

“Your friend. Bride or groom.”

“Neither,” she says, looking back at her book. “I wasn't invited.”

“You look invited.”

It takes him a moment to realize he’s right - he hadn't noticed, not consciously, her hair pulled up in perfectly arranged curls, the deep blue dress that gathers at her collarbone and drapes off the shoulders, exposing toned arms and not a hint of décolletage. He’s oddly disappointed in that, and annoyed that he’s disappointed - annoyed that he’s even registered that her hair is blonde and her eyes are subtly lined, that her nails are manicured but not painted. There’s a small bump in her nose he has the wildest desire to touch, and he fists his hands against his thighs. 

Meeting his gaze, the woman studies him for a moment, head slightly tilted, and he feels utterly exposed, utterly ridiculous in his deep burgundy suit, no tie, Doc Martens she can't even see. 

“You don't,” she says, lips quirking up just slightly, and he rolls his eyes. 

“I don't do weddings.”

“Clearly.” At his frown, she closes her book, setting it on the table as she moves her chair just enough to not have to crane around the flowers. “You're a friend of the bride, judging by the way you've been staring at her since dinner ended, but you didn't bother to follow the black tie requirement and you're not participating, which means you're here under duress. You're not family - no one else seems to recognize you. You’re at least three times her age—” He mentally rolls his eyes at that. “—employer, perhaps?—and most are giving you a wide berth because they think you're in love with her and find it creepy.”

The Doctor stares, resisting the urge to let his lips part, mind whirring - she must have spoken to someone, must know him, though he doesn't recognize her, and for the first time in his life he’s positive he would remember. Everything's been fuzzy since he regenerated, faces blurring together, chunks of time missing - it comes back to him when necessary, it seems, and he chalks it up to being old - terribly, terribly old. 

She continues, eyes casually scanning the room, in the same slightly bored tone, as if he’s a mystery far too simple for her to solve. He thinks perhaps he is.

“The truth is, you think the groom’s not good enough for her, which is rubbish, and you know it's rubbish, which is why you're over here sulking behind the world’s ugliest bouquet.” Raising an eyebrow, she folds her hands over her book and looks back at him. “How’d I do?”

The Doctor glares, annoyed at being so obvious, annoyed at being intrigued, annoyed at being ever so slightly turned on. 

“I’m not her employer,” he grumbles.

“Professor, then?”

He clenches his jaw and looks away, but out of the corner of his eye, sees her almost smile.

“I'm her Doctor.”

“Is she ill?”

“None of your business,” he snaps.

She shrugs, fingers resting against the inside cover, like she wants to open it, but doesn't want to be seen opening it. 

“Not a medical doctor,” she muses. “You haven't the face for it.”

“What makes you say that?”

She's right, of course, but he isn't going to admit that.

“We’ve been sitting here for half an hour and you haven't said a word to me. Two attractive, single people at a wedding - if you cared at all for people or proprietary, you'd have introduced yourself. Socially stunted _and_ a velvet blazer? I'm thinking physics, astronomy, something without the malaise of regular human interaction.”

“You didn't.”

“Didn't what?”

“Introduce yourself.”

“I'm not really here,” she replies, touching the side of her nose.

“You find me attractive?”

He curses under his breath, until she laughs - a warm, soft, quiet sound that makes his cheeks flush, irrationally pleased to have elicited the sound.

“It's the eyebrows,” she says, leaning back in her chair, one hand over her book. “They're daring.”

“I'm twice your age,” he lies. 

“Sucker for a rebel,” she returns, and he wonders whether this is flirting. He’s been told about it, told he doesn't know how, has never had any desire to try. 

Tucking her book in a large clutch, the clutch under the table, she rises, extending a hand.

“Care for a dance?”

The Doctor wrinkles his nose. “I don't dance.”

“Pity,” she says, unfazed, and moves toward the floor.

He regrets his decision the moment she turns her back, the previously thought modest dress sweeping open to the base of her spine, bare skin and muscle and the wings of her shoulders making him swallow. He shifts uncomfortably, and though she doesn't turn, he’s positive she knows. It's only a moment before she had a partner, a tall, young fellow with a broad chest and large hands, falling to her hips where his would have gone to her back. The fabric of her skirt peels aside every so often to reveal a long stretch of leg up to the tops of her thigh, calves stretched by heels - tall, but solid, easy to move in, dance in, run in. 

He doesn't know why that occurs to him. Normal people don't run. 

Gaze torn from Clara for the first time, he watches as she moves, watches her hands curl into Broad Chest’s shoulders, the line of her neck, the pleasant, entirely fake smile that pulls at red lips. Her eyes meet his every time she turns in his direction, a wink over the man’s shoulder. He watches, nails digging into his palms as her partner’s hands become more confident, slipping around her waist to the small of her back, as he chuckles at something she says, and her teeth flash white. 

He thinks about those teeth on his skin, lipstick smears against his neck. He can't remember the last time his body cared, or his mind for that matter. He thinks of his wife, so long dead, his children buried, friends flickering in and out, of Clara, his carer, his minder. She’ll be gone soon, swept away by love and life and moving on, just like Amelia; she says she won't, of course, but what are days in a blue box in comparison to warm arms and someone who listens, who remembers her favorite perfume and her allergies and what music she likes. It's taken him thousands of years to realize, that secrets of the universe are nothing compared to a home, to the smile Danny is giving her now. She doesn't need the mystery anymore - she has the answer. 

Sometimes he wonders if he’s been asking the wrong question all these years. 

His eyes catch on the strange, uninvited woman - she’s with someone else now, but they all look the same: a sea of copies, but _she_ stands out. Stands out and fits in, completely unassuming, completely at ease. No one notices her presence, yet everyone’s looking at her, their eyes catching on her like a snag in fabric, only to pull away and forget. 

Her body moves with grace, but there’s a hitch - it doesn't come naturally. Delicate movements, serene smiles, masking her strength intentionally. It amuses him for some reason, the utter conviction with which he believes that she could destroy everyone and everything in this room without breaking a sweat. He shouldn't like that, should be concerned, but he isn't. She won't hurt anyone, not unless she has to, and he doesn't know how he knows that. It should bother him. It doesn't. 

She’s a curiosity, as so few are, alone and uninvited, but it’s the armor, the realization of something kindred that finally pulls him to his feet, across the floor, brusquely dismissing the man on her arm. 

“You should give that back,” he says, when the man is out of earshot. 

She blinks up at him innocently. “Give what back?”

The Doctor snorts, but his hands are trembling ever so slightly as he settles one at the center of her back, the other curving against her palm. She steps into him easily, chest pressed to his. 

“His credit card. ID. Whatever it was you took.”

There’s a flash of surprise, so quick he’d have missed it, if not for his reluctance to blink, to let one moment go by without his eyes on her. She smirks, following his slow sway - not at all timed to the upbeat music, but she doesn't seem to mind.

“Where exactly do you think I'd put it?”

Her voice is low, gravelled, inviting him to look and he wants to, so badly, but keeps his eyes on her face, the soft curve of her cheeks. 

He shrugs. “Women wear all sorts of strange things under their clothes.”

He regrets the words as soon as they're spoken, as soon as she leans in, her breath ghosting over his ear. 

“I don't.”

Without his permission, his hand slides higher up her back, fingers slipping just barely under the side of her dress above her ribs; she inhales sharply, but doesn't withdraw, doesn't slap him, doesn't freeze. 

“I guess you are daring after all.”

“And you're thief.”

“You’ll have to search me to prove it.”

“Is that what you want?”

She falters, more at his tone than his words, he thinks. Her motion halts and he steps on her toe, wincing in apology. She smooths a hand over his shoulder, unconcerned. 

“I’d rather keep dancing,” she says finally, and he finds himself nodding, pulling her closer. She turns her head, cheek pressed against his shoulder, curled into him in a way far too intimate for strangers, but she doesn't feel like one. 

Her hair smells familiar, but he can't place it. His senses feel dulled, but he always feels that way when he stands still for too long. 

She sighs against him, spine relaxing under his hand, under the soothing brush of his thumb back and forth against her skin. 

“Do you crash a lot of weddings, then?”

He senses more than feels her smile. “Only the ones I'm not invited to.”

“And the stealing?”

“Entertainment.”

He snorts at that, lips quirking into an almost smile. “That would be funny if it were true.”

She pulls back, and he immediately misses the weight of her against his shoulder. 

“What makes you think it isn't?”

“Because you're not enjoying it.”

She swallows, holding his gaze for a moment before she looks away, schools her features, and grins back at him. 

“Crowd’s too easy.”

“The crowd isn't why you're sad.”

She freezes. “I'm not sad.”

“Then why do you look sad?”

She tilts her head, eyeing him with a raised eyebrow. “Do you interrogate all your dance partners?”

“Do you ever give a straight answer?”

She smiles, but it’s pained, a sadness behind her eyes that’s hauntingly familiar. “Only sometimes,” she admits, then: “I’m looking for someone. My husband.”

“And you think he’s here?”

“I know he’s here.”

“Then why are you dancing with me?”

She flinches, hard, biting her lip as she looks away, and his hands tighten instinctively around her, afraid she’ll run. 

“I was hoping he’d find me.”

“Are you lost?” 

He doesn’t know why he asks, but it seems true. The way her face falls momentarily, the way her fingers curl over the back of his neck, the way she sighs, and shakes her head. 

“No. But I think he might be.”

The Doctor huffs. “Sounds like an idiot.”

She smiles, then, sad but real. “Oh, he is.” 

“Then why are you with him?” At her frown, he ducks his head, voice low against her ear as they continue to move from side to side. “You’re clever—too clever for this lot. You read people, you understand them, but you don’t like them, you’re not comfortable around them, otherwise you wouldn’t be talking to me. You’re graceful, but tense—you’re waiting for something to happen, a fight, a danger. At the table, you sat with your back to the wall, and you’ve been scanning the crowd ever since. Dress is easy to move in, shoes easy to run in, and you’ve got a gun strapped to your thigh with a garter belt, naughty.” 

She smirks, looks mildly impressed so he continues, wanting to see her fully astounded. 

“You’ve spent most of the night reading that book, but not really reading it—your eyes just scan over it. You have it memorized, but you carry it with you everywhere regardless. You keep turning us so you can look over my shoulder at the table to make sure no one’s discovered where you stashed it - you don’t want anyone else to find it, so not a book, then. Diary. All your deepest secrets. But you carry it with you anyway. You can’t bear to be without it. Why?”

She shrugs. “One should always have something salacious to read at wedd—”

“Lie. It’s not entertainment, it’s personal. Meaningful. A gift.”

Her spine tenses, body arcing away from his slightly. “Your point?”

“Do you read it even though it makes you sad? Or _because_ it makes you sad?”

They’ve stopped moving at some point - a couple bumps into him but he barely notices, eyes fixed on her face, the lines around her eyes, the shadows - heavy, like his. 

“If you were really clever, you’d know the answer to that.”

He shakes his head, her name little more than a breath. “River…” 

She stills, eyes growing wide, lips parting, and she looks surprised. Hopeful. Afraid. 

“I didn’t tell you my name.”

The Doctor frowns. “Yes you did.”

“No.” She shakes her head, a curl falling out of its pins, and he has the strongest urge to tuck it behind her ear, to touch it, to see if it will spring back into place. To see if it’s as soft as it looks. To see if she’ll shiver at his touch. “I didn’t.”

He thinks of her blue book, the gun on her thigh, the thrum he can sense in her veins that echoes his own saying _run, run, run._ She’s clever, but she’s also beautiful, and it’s the latter that confuses him, that makes him uneasy and excited and anticipatory, makes his stomach feel full and his head feel empty, because he doesn’t notice beauty. Not this go around, rarely before. He doesn’t know when Clara’s put on makeup or notice if she’s dressed up. She looks the same, looks like everyone else, stands out only because she’s clever and she’s _his_ , his minder, carer, friend, boss, whatever she’s choosing to be that day, that hour, but he’s no idea what she looks like. He couldn’t describe her. 

The woman in his arms, now, her skin smooth under his palms, he could paint. He could close his eyes a hundred years from now and sketch the line of her jaw and the hollow of her throat and every individual curl - which ones catch the light, which ones hide. 

“Do I know you?” he asks, unsure why he isn’t angry. He’s always angry. Grumpy and irritated and frustrated but he isn’t any of those things now. 

Now, he wants to smile. 

He feels it tugging at his cheeks, and tries to press his lips into a thin line, but her eyes are glassy, her hand hesitating, then perching tentatively against his cheek. He leans into her instinctively, and the smile that blooms across her face makes his hearts skip beats.

“Yes. You do,” she whispers. 

He wants to ask how. He wants to know - who is she, where does she come from, how does she know him, why doesn’t he care that their bodies are pressed together or that she’s holding his hand and touching his face? Why does it feel so familiar, so comforting, so right? 

Why does he feel like letting go would be agony?

“I don’t remember,” he murmurs, eyes searching hers for something, anything, some clue. He wracks his brain, memory after memory but it’s all still so jumbled, everything out of place and out of order and it’s frustrating and alarming and then she’s soothing him, her breath on his cheek as he pulls him closer feels like forest breeze. 

“I know,” she whispers, and he feels her hand run up and down his back. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t realize how tightly he’s gripping her hips until she shifts her stance - not to get away, just her weight. He swallows. His legs feel heavy, his fingers stiff as he tries to coax them to loosen their hold. When she pulls back enough to see his face, her cheeks are wet. 

“You’re crying.”

She shakes her head, still that same soft smile he’s seen a thousand times, somewhere. “I’m not.”

He blinks, and her face blurs. Blinks again and she clears. “I’m crying?” She nods, and he frowns. “Then why are you smiling?”

She presses her hand over his hearts - he’s sure she can feel how fast they’re beating, if they’re beating at all. “Because it means you remember. Some part of you, in here.” She taps his chest with her finger. 

“Who am I? To you.”

“I told you.”

If she did, he doesn't remember that, either. 

“Tell me again.”

She shakes her head, eyes brimming with tears that don't fall. Almost as if she's forgotten how to let them. 

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Spoilers,” she murmurs, and the word reverberates. It’s important, so important: big and complicated and so, so sad. 

Still, she’s smiling. There should be a separate word for it, he thinks, because there’s no joy there. It isn't happiness that curves at her lips - pain and longing, but muted, distilled by some other emotion that he can't place, something that usurps all the agony, that makes it worthwhile. 

“Well,” she amends, “Except this one.” 

She leans up, pressing that smile to his cheek. Her breath is warm, her lips soft, her eyelashes drifting across his skin, and his eyes fall closed. He lets himself breathe her in - perfume and ozone and time. 

“Come find me,” she murmurs, pulling away slowly. “When you remember who I am.”

Her hands fall away and he resists the urge to reach out and pull her back. 

“Tell me who you are.”

“Can’t be told,” she says, the words repetitive. “Has to be lived.”

“Why?”

He’s aware he sounds petulant, but doesn't so much care when she eyes him fondly, then glances over toward the table, then back to him. 

“Because it’s not a diary anymore,” she says, lifting her hands to fiddle at the neck of his shirt - _bow tie, he should have worn a bow tie_ \- smoothing the lapels. “And I won’t have you ruin our second chance by being an impatient sod.”

“Second chance?” he repeats dumbly, even as she pulls away, walks backward a few steps. 

“Come find me,” she says, and disappears into the crowd. 

\--

He doesn't search for her. 

Even after he remembers.

Even after nights under a billion stars and grumpy old fish and a spaceman and Silence all come back to him. Even after prayer leaves and ponds that aren't ponds and all of time collapsing. Even after he remembers her kisses, her hands on his bare chest, her stuttered moans in his ear, he doesn't search for her because it's over. 

He said goodbye at his own grave. Nothing more finite than that. She didn’t entirely vanish - always present, always in the back of his mind, a whisper in his ear - but he didn’t feel quite so haunted.

He’s not sure he can go through it again. Find her only to lose her. 

So he runs. Far and fast, whatever direction the TARDIS allows. He skips through their time lines, avoiding places she could be and will be and might be. 

He runs, mostly alone, sometimes with friends, and with every day feels his feet grow heavier, his shoulders tender. 

He wants to stop, but he doesn't want to stop. 

He wants the years back.

He wants his pillow to smell like her. 

The TARDIS hums soothingly, even as he tries to rewire Deck 9 to include a botanical garden and a slide direct to the movie theatre, something she’s never been keen on. The wires spark, and he hisses, pulling his hand back and whacking it on the underside of the console. 

“Rude,” he grumbles. 

The TARDIS seems to laugh. 

He rifles around in his pockets for a pair of gloves, finds silly string and a miniature bonsai tree and what he thinks might be a shofar. When he finds the gloves, pulls them out with triumph, a card stuck inside the right hand falls out. 

He frowns - it’s an ID card, someone he doesn't recognize, but the logo is Earth government, some sort of pass, a bar code at the bottom. 

Worming his way out from under the console, it slips from his fingers, back side up, white except for the thick, black words that stare back at him, and the coordinates beneath. 

_Check the Library._

\--

He doesn't know how she did it. 

Charlotte had merely shrugged and smiled and said she said to tell him, _There’s always a way out._

He’d forgotten that, somehow, somewhere along the way, still can't quite believe it as he stumbles from the TARDIS, and a tomato squishes under his toes. 

“Really?” she chides, “First the cucumbers, now the tomatoes?” He thinks of her last house, the cottage on Luna, where he never failed to land in her garden. “Have you got something against vegetables?”

The Doctor swallows, his throat so dry it hurts. “Tomato’s a fruit.”

“Not as far as dessert is concerned.”

“There’s a planet in the Dundra system where they make a caramelized tomato tarte tatin, and Moritania - the chef, not the warlord - makes a decent sorbet. Not as good as mine, but—”

River wings an eyebrow, arms folded across her chest, but there’s an eagerness behind her impatience, a hopefulness even she can't hide. “Did you just come here to list delicacies or—”

“River.”

Her name wavers in the air between them, and her arms drop. Silence stretches, but it does little more than pull him forward, mindful of her plants, until he’s standing right in front of her, a step below her on the porch. 

River, always braver than he could ever be, meets his gaze. “Do you know why you're here?”

The pulls the card from his pocket. “You left this for me. At the wedding.”

Her face falls. “Yes, I did.”

“You said to come find you when I remembered.”

Her lower lip quivers, and she pulls it between her teeth just briefly. “Have you?”

He stares, drinking her in - hair pulled into a messy ponytail, face clear of makeup, in ratty jeans and what he thinks is his old shirt, a button up Bowtie used to wear, with red stripes and worn elbows and he can't bear it, not another moment. The card slips from his fingers as he surges forward, clamoring to the top step, his arm around her waist to keep her from falling backward even as he kisses her, his other hand tangled in her hair and she smells like perfume and ozone and time and he doesn't understand how he could ever forget this. Why, like an idiot, he thought he’d be better off running away because he knows, the moment her mouth opens under his and she sinks into his arms, he would rather endure a million goodbyes with her for another chance at hello. 

He’s seen stars die and planets born and kingdoms rise and fall, seen the best operas and most famous paintings, mountains capped with perfect snow and forests that bloom in more colors than the human eye can see. He’s seen more and heard more and touched more than anyone in the universe but he knows, he’s never felt anything more beautiful than her, pressed tight to every part of him.

“I didn’t mean to forget,” he rasps, pulling back just enough to see her face. “It hurt too much.”

“I know,” she murmurs, smile pained but under it, so much love. That's what he couldn't see before, what he failed to recognize, but it’s so obvious now.

 _All that pain and misery,_ he thinks, _and it just made her kind._

“Forgive me?”

“Always,” she whispers, lips fluttering over his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids. “And completely.” 

“River. Are you really…?”

“What?” She smirks, probably at the desperate look on his face. “You thought a computer program was going to hold me?” 

His face splits into a wide grin, one that stretches his cheeks and hurts his jaw and it feels strange but natural, normal, with her smiling back at him. 

“Idiot,” she says fondly, brushing her hand through his hair.


End file.
